The Emperor’s Angel of Death

"They said they'd be here soon."

"Soon? Let's hope they really are soon enough."

Su Leina wasn't surprised by the tech-sergeant's reply. Just then, two Flayed Ones leaped at him simultaneously. He raised his gun and blasted one of them apart. Before he could shoot the other, it swung a claw at him with alarming speed.

Su Leina jumped back, feeling the hissing claw-blade nearly hit him. The moment he landed, it followed up. The Ninth Company Captain thrust out his sword, lunging at it as it stumbled.

"This is for the blood debt of my legion brothers!"

With an impassioned battle cry, he unleashed a series of savage strikes, directly hacking off one of its hands. Then, dodging another sweeping claw that grazed his side, he delivered a horizontal slash from its flank, cutting through its chest and severing its metal spine.

Yet even that didn't kill the thing. It still crawled towards him, dragging its severed body across the blood-stained ground.

"Tenacious bastard!"

Su Leina kicked out savagely, then swung his sword in a downward arc, knocking it to the ground and stomping on its skull again and again—stomping hard until it stopped convulsing.

"Captain, behind you!"

Alerted, Su Leina turned and fired the last round of energy stored in his pistol.

However, the plasma only triggered a burst of intense white noise. A nightmare, twice as tall as a man and serpentine, lunged at Su Leina. Its upper body resembled that of some insect, with eight bladed limbs. Its lower body was serpentine, and its triangular face had four lenses radiating a malevolent aura. The uppermost forelimbs bore two crackling metal whips.

The two whips sent Su Leina flying nearly five meters with a single strike. He crashed down from the parapet, landing heavily. Fortunately, his armor absorbed the impact.

The Space Marine Captain struggled to his knees, but the opponent reappeared like a phantom. The two whips bound his torso, and the tail wrapped around his legs, pinning him forcefully to the ground. Sharp, bladed forelimbs scraped against his armor, sending sparks flying.

"Damn it!"

Gritting his teeth and enduring the pain, Su Leina felt his armor being torn open at the abdomen, while the opponent's head extended a spike.

He immediately grabbed the sharp spike with his left hand, then tore at it with all his might, while his right hand formed a fist and struck the opponent's face heavily.

With a burst of sparks, the Crypt Horror's lenses shattered, its head caved in and cracked, but that only made it more frenzied.

"Captain!"

Roaring, a cog-axe slammed into the alien machine's head from behind, then lifted again, directly splitting the machine's back. The heavy husk twitched a few times before releasing the embraced Su Leina.

"Captain, are you alright?"

Forcibly pushing away the alien machine, Su Leina gripped Karl's hand and stood up, breathing heavily. He glanced down at his armor. A gash had been torn in his abdomen by the opponent's claws, and blood was still flowing, but fortunately, no internal organs were damaged. Relying on the legion's bloodline blessing, he would soon recover.

At this moment, he noticed there were other such machines in the stronghold. Two warriors were lying on the ground, one with a severed left arm, the other with his entire chest ripped open, likely injured in the initial sneak attack. Fortunately, the others reacted in time, finishing them off with precise shooting and the rapid hacking of chainswords.

Even now, a Terminator was still fighting one of the Crypt Horrors, both locked in a deadly struggle. The Terminator repeatedly struck its head with a power fist, then fired repeatedly at its torso at close range, blasting it to pieces.

"These alien machines must be using some kind of phasing device. They appeared directly inside the stronghold. The walls can't stop them!"

The tech-sergeant reported his conjecture between gasps.

"Behind the walls isn't safe either."

Su Leina checked the squad's status. The tactical display showed that 11 men in the company had already fallen, but one of them had a Gray Aegis implant and should recover soon—the Gray Aegis' ability to resurrect the dead was no longer a secret. The entire Ninth Company had 14 men with Gray Aegis implants, all enviable lucky individuals, including Su Leina.

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Sure enough, the one whose chest had been ripped open earlier suddenly sat up, then felt his body and quickly stood up to retrieve his dropped weapon.

Just then, Su Leina heard something and looked up. Karl followed suit.

"Finally here..."

The next moment, the sky disappeared from above them. Darkness enveloped the earth, followed by the sound of countless wings flapping.

Over sixty Archeopter flapping machines streaked across the sky, like a vast dark cloud, followed closely by a dense swarm of Dragonwing Soldiers.

But the arriving Archeopters and Dragonwing Soldiers were not the red of the local forge world, but a unique red-black, with markings indicating they actually came from Ulan Huda. This was, in fact, a special unit called the Sky Scorching Phosphor Feathers—named after the weapon in Sorkhian's hands.

Soon, the Archeopters scattered in formations of six and swooped down towards the battlefield.

Amidst a series of violent roars, Su Leina could see green flashes and flames even through the walls. As a White Templars captain, he was no stranger to this kind of fire.

"Phosphor weapons... a nostalgic scent. The armories of the old homeworld often had this smell."

The Archeopters that came to support were not the regular models, but a variant called Stratos Raptors. This type was equipped with two terrifying heavy phosphor blaster cannons in the nose. These terrifying heavy weapons could easily burn a large area into a molten, deadly zone. Everything within range would be either evaporated by the intense phosphor reaction or burned to ashes by the subsequent, all-pervasive damage of the phosphor. There were also two heavy machine guns on the left and right hatches, giving the entire aircraft formidable support firepower that was extremely disproportionate to its size.

As they swept across the battlefield, even the Astartes had to retreat from the walls, while countless Scarabs and Crypt Stalkers rolled and melted in the horrifying phosphor fire.

Following closely behind the Archeopters were the Dragonwing Soldiers. Like the Protector Guard, they were living people transformed into semi-mechanical warriors. Special devices were implanted in their shoulders, which were directly connected to the thrusters on the Dragonwing Soldiers' backs—a direct-connection biomimetic flight integration pack, allowing the Dragonwing Soldiers to control them as easily as their own limbs, making them appear to have a pair of dragon wings.

The Dragonwing Soldiers' wing sets and jet engines could be called engineering marvels, especially the wing sets, which were a self-organizing carbon nanofiber fabric layer. This allowed the Dragonwing Soldiers to change the wing set characteristics at any time according to their wishes, such as making them harder than structural steel or softer than silk, all at the user's whim. It could be said that after these modifications, the flight pack was almost integrated with the Dragonwing Soldiers, which allowed the Dragonwing Soldiers to cope with almost any combat situation.

Appearing here were the Annihilators among the Dragonwing Soldiers. The lower parts of their legs had been directly replaced with bird-like, or even more vicious, spur-like claws. They wielded special phosphor guns with sufficient range and ample killing power, and could also spray while moving.

They hovered over the heads of the Necrons like vultures, besieging the scurrying Flayed Ones and Crypt Spiders, igniting and melting them.

Su Leina sighed and looked at Karl.

"Let's go. We can't stay here with the phosphor fire. Clean up these things. The situation has changed. The Necrons have appeared on the ground. We need to report to the Chapter Master immediately."

Soon, the warriors of the Ninth Company left the stronghold surrounded by phosphor fire in a flyer. Not long after they left, in the command post that had been mostly collapsed by the bombing, a slender metal hand gently pushed aside a piece of debris. In the shadows, a golden mask emerged, watching the Astartes' Thunderhawk disappear into the horizon.